BertvB posted a photo:

A striking wide-angle landscape shot taken from Surfeiland in Aalsmeer on the evening of June 19th. The iconic Art Deco Watertower stands as a commanding silhouette against a fiery, copper-tinted sky, while the low setting sun reflects brilliantly across the gentle ripples of the Westeinderplassen. Faint curtains of rain in the distance hint at the approaching summer thunderstorm, creating a serene yet dramatic atmosphere.

IRGC claims base in south-west England was used by US to launch bombing missions, making it ‘legitimate target’

• Middle East crisis live – latest updates

The government has said the UK is “ready to defend itself” after Iran’s military warned that any bases being used by the US were “legitimate targets”.

The UK has allowed the US to launch “defensive” operations from British bases hosting American planes since the start of its war on Iran but has refused to help in offensive operations.

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The troubled Games looked doomed until Glasgow stepped in but this opening ceremony had plenty of feelgood factor

The Commonwealth Games in Glasgow opened on Thursday evening to the surreal sight of King Charles and Queen Camilla stepping out of a Tardis – and a mechanical Loch Ness monster roaring the first few bars of Flower of Scotland.

The Tardis was a nod to the fact that police boxes were designed by the Scottish architect Gilbert MacKenzie Trench. But the Doctor Who reference proved to be doubly apt given the Games faced being exterminated until Glasgow stepped in after Victoria pulled out due to financial pressures.

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Power has been too centralised in Britain and tackling that is key to progress and prosperity. This initiative is ambitious: we’re remaking the state

• Andy Burnham is prime minister of the United Kingdom

On Monday, while the cameras were fixed on that famous black door in Downing Street, something important was happening 165 miles away. A small team of officials and advisers were walking into an office building in Manchester to set about the remaking of the British state.

This was the beginning of No 10 North: the first major act of this government and what I hope will be seen as its most defining.

Andy Burnham is the prime minister of the United Kingdom

Do you have an opinion on the issues raised in this article? If you would like to submit a response of up to 300 words by email to be considered for publication in our letters section, please click here.

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It’s our ethical duty to understand large numbers. “Our world is increasingly moving towards extreme values: Damages from climate change, deaths due to genocide, wealth that knows no bounds. We can’t tackle them if we can’t wrap our heads around [them].”

A Teen Reporter Searched for His Community in the Epstein Files. Adults Freaked Out. “Once everyone was back at school on Tuesday, the high schoolers lawyered up during their lunch hour.”

The Register: Expensive LG Monitors are using Windows 11 driver installation to serve McAfee ads without even a security prompt (and seem to have been doing this for years) — Ars Technica, today: Microsoft responds and states that LG will no longer be allowed to do this.

Em dash included just to annoy people who assume that's a sign of generative AI.

The European Central Bank has shared a phenomenal shortlist of 10 designs for future Euro notes. All ten designs feature the full suite of denominations and either human or bird elements. Four out of the ten options are vertical notes! Europeans are invited to vote on the designs, using an emoji-appended rating scale.

MADRID (ANP) - De regio Madrid heeft de regering verzocht de nationale noodtoestand uit te roepen vanwege de ernstige bosbranden in drie autonome regio's. De president van de regio Isabel Díaz Ayuso heeft dit verzoek ingediend via X. Ze geeft daarbij aan dat er in Madrid "duizenden mensen zijn geëvacueerd" en dat de branden "niet meer te blussen zijn".

Concreet betekent dit dat de nationale regering de controle over de situatie moet overnemen en de leiding over de noodsituatie op zich moet nemen. De regio kan de bluswerkzaamheden van de drie woedende bosbranden - twee in Villa del Prado en een derde in het nabijgelegen San Martín de Valdeiglesias - niet meer op eigen kracht aan.

In een geluidsfragment dat naar onder meer de Spaanse krant El País is gestuurd, stelt de minister van Milieu, Landbouw en Binnenlandse Zaken van Madrid, Carlos Novillo, dat het om een situatie gaat "die de veiligheid bedreigt van meer dan 10.000 inwoners van Madrid die op dit moment zijn geëvacueerd". "Momenteel zijn eenheden van de brandweer van de regio Madrid, de gemeente Madrid en de militaire noodhulpeenheid [UME] druk doende met bluswerkzaamheden om levens en eigendommen te redden."

WASHINGTON (ANP/AFP) - Donald Trump gaat de uitlevering van influencer Andrew Tate en zijn broer Tristan aan Groot-Brittannië wegens zedendelicten niet tegenhouden, zo heeft het Witte Huis donderdag laten weten.

"Nee", antwoordde Witte Huis-woordvoerder Karoline Leavitt tijdens een persmoment op de vraag of Trump en zijn regering van plan waren in te grijpen in het uitleveringsproces van de broers. Ook minister van Buitenlandse Zaken Marco Rubio nam afstand van de zaak. "Er is voor ons geen enkele rol weggelegd op dit moment, en misschien ook wel nooit wat dit betreft", vertelde hij woensdag aan verslaggevers op de Filippijnen.

Tate en zijn jongere broer werden zaterdag in Miami opgepakt door de Amerikaanse autoriteiten, een stap die hun advocaat "politiek gemotiveerd" noemde. De broers vechten hun uitlevering aan.

De broers, die bekendstaan om hun extreem misogyne standpunten en miljoenen volgers op sociale media hebben, werden al gezocht in het Verenigd Koninkrijk. Daar wachten hen aanklachten voor verkrachting en mensenhandel.

ROTTERDAM (ANP) - Het lijkt vooralsnog rustig in het deel van de Rotterdamse wijk De Esch waar sinds donderdag 23.00 uur een nachtelijk gebiedsverbod geldt. Een ANP-fotograaf zag dat de politie twee mannen bekeurde, die daarna de wijk verlieten. Er zijn vrijwel geen mensen op straat.

Het gebiedsverbod voor een deel van De Esch, in het stadsdeel Kralingen-Crooswijk, geldt de komende drie maanden van 23.00 uur tot 05.00 uur. Tijdens die uren is de wijk verboden gebied voor mensen die er niet wonen, werken of op bezoek komen. Het verbod moet een eind maken aan hardnekkige overlast door bezoekers van buiten de wijk, die vooral in de avond en nacht de boel op stelten zetten.

Zo is er al jaren sprake van straatraces, ronkende motoren, drugs- en lachgasgebruik, harde muziek en geschreeuw.

Volgens burgemeester Carola Schouten staat "de leefbaarheid in de wijk onder druk. De rust moet terugkeren in De Esch en bewoners moeten zich prettig en veilig voelen. Daarom maak ik gebruik van deze bevoegdheid." Overtreders kunnen een boete krijgen.

banzainetsurfer has added a photo to the pool:

The Sankyo Warehouses (山居倉庫, Sankyo Sōko) are a complex of rice warehouses in Sakata that now also serves as a tourist spot with a rice museum, picturesque grounds and a shop selling local goods.
Japan's most important shipping trade route of the feudal ages connected northern Japan with Osaka via ports along the Sea of Japan and the Seto Inland Sea, with Sakata emerging as a major trade hub along the way. The Shonai Plain around Sakata is one of Japan's few large plains and is ideally suited to high-quality rice cultivation. The celebrated local rice became Sakata's most lucrative commodity, and the Sankyo Warehouses have historically been where the rice is shipped from the surrounding farmland and stored before being sent to the market
Originally dating to 1893, the complex is a long row of 15 storehouses, of which most are still in use as storehouses for the rice from the Shonai Plain. The area has become popular with visitors not only for its historical importance, but also for its picturesque surroundings that include a Zelkova tree-flanked path along the perimeter and nice views along the riverbank.
Source: www.japan-guide.com/e/e7994.html

stan.jernigan has added a photo to the pool:

I took this photo of the “Gwandeokjeong Hall” with my iPhone 17 Pro Max while visiting and exploring the Jejumok-Gwana Government Office on Jeju Island, South Korea. This historic site in Jeju City served as the seat of the local government. Jejumok-Gwana (where ‘Gwana’ means ‘village’) is a complex of administrative and military buildings, rebuilt in 2002…

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Ars Technica: Many gamers have been lamenting Sony's recently announced decision to halt sales of physical game discs in 2028. However, new data revealed by Circana analyst Mat Piscatella highlights how years of stark economic trends helped lead Sony to that decision. In a social media thread Thursday morning, Piscatella shared insights into Circana's tracking data on physical game sales in the U.S. dating back to 2003. A graph of those trends shows physical sales peaking in the 12 months ending June 2009, when 297 million units were sold across the US. Those physical unit sales have been on a steady downward trajectory since then, leading to just 37 million physical units selling in the U.S. in the last 12 months.

The newly revealed data follows on an earlier post from Piscatella highlighting that only seven PlayStation games had sold over 100,000 physical units so far in 2026. Today, Piscatella followed up on that stat with a graph showing how this baseline used to be common; 100 PlayStation games sold at least 100,000 physical units in 2008. The ceiling for physical PlayStation game sales isn't all that impressive these days either; Piscatella shared that the top-selling physical PlayStation game has only sold a paltry 275,000 units in the U.S. so far this year.

There are some small signs of hope for the physical game market, if you squint. Piscatella noted that aggregate spending on physical video games in the U.S. was actually up 4 percent year-to-date, compared to the year before. But that small increase is a mere blip following 16 straight years of sizable declines in physical game spending in the US, reducing a peak of $11.5 billion in physical spending in 2009 to a mere $1.6 billion for the 12 months ending in May. And Piscatella attributed the recent growth in physical spending to "the Switch 2 and physical sales growth on Nintendo platforms," while other platforms (such as PlayStation) were still seeing "percentage drops from the teens to the mid 30s" in that spending.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

Amazon is integrating its Luna cloud gaming service into Prime Video, adding a new "Games" tab where Prime members can play titles like "Hogwarts Legacy," "EA Sports FC 26," "Indiana Jones and the Great Circle," "Clue," and "Taboo." The games will be available starting today on Fire TVs in the U.S. and U.K., with additional supported devices and countries in the coming months. TechCrunch reports: With this move, Amazon is hoping games can turn Prime Video into a one-stop entertainment destination, borrowing a strategy from Netflix, which has increasingly embraced party games over the past several years. Since Amazon already operates a gaming service, it makes sense for the tech giant to integrate it into its streaming platform. [...] Amazon says its vision is to remove the barriers to gaming and make it accessible to anyone regardless of their experience or budget. The tech giant says Luna is designed to bring gaming to a much broader audience by removing the need for expensive consoles or gaming PCs and making games as easy to access as movies or TV shows.

Read more of this story at Slashdot.

A judge caught a court reporter making AI-generated errors in a court transcript, and put stenographers everywhere on notice for their use of AI. 

In a memorandum decision concerning a case about a man who sold drugs to another man who overdosed and died, filed on July 23, Judge Paul Felix wrote in a footnote of the decision that a transcript contained errors that looked a lot like generative AI. The footnote was spotted by attorney Rob Freund on X.

“At one point in the transcript, a motion, presumably made by the State, is attributed to the trial court. At another point, an objection, presumably made by Williams, is attributed to the Bailiff. At yet another point, the State’s closing argument is attributed to the trial court,” judge Felix wrote. “These errors, among others not described herein, complicated but did not substantially impede our review of Williams’s appeal. Regardless, we remind the Court Reporter that this court relies on transcripts being true and accurate representations of the transcribed proceedings. Based upon the types of errors reviewed, it appears that generative artificial intelligence may have assisted with the preparation of this transcript. While AI can improve efficiency and be a productive tool for many professionals, it is incumbent upon those using such systems to proofread and ensure the accuracy of the generated product.” 

In case after case after case, for the last few years, judges have been catching lawyers using AI in court filings. These situations are always messy and embarrassing for the attorneys — whose whole job it is to represent their clients to the best of their ability by citing existing case law and legal precedent, which AI routinely fucks up — and judges are becoming more outspoken about their frustrations. In May, judges in the Supreme Court of the State of New York Appellate Division laid into several lawyers for more than 20 minutes after accusing one of them of using AI and the others of being too sloppy to catch it; the judges called the entire situation “striking, concerning, disappointing, and saddening.” Lawyers, meanwhile, blame paralegals, head colds, and “rushing.” 

But this is the first time a court reporter has been publicly put on notice for not catching AI-generated errors in transcripts, raising the specter of there being errors not just in court filings from attorneys but in the records of official proceedings of a trial. There are many apps and companies that offer AI-generated transcripts for court reporting, but stenographers say their expertise as human listeners and skilled transcribers, especially since AI tends to guess instead of pausing to ask for a re-statement or resolve ambiguity before putting it into the court record, is still extremely valuable in the courtroom.

GPUs are great for training, but for inference, you need a heavy dose of speedy memory to churn out the tokens. AMD has tapped Cerebras Systems to develop a disaggregated compute platform combining Instinct GPUs with the chip startup's SRAM-powered AI accelerators. The goal: to deliver ultra-low-latency inference for agentic workloads. The collaboration, announced on stage during AMD CEO Lisa Su's Advancing AI keynote Thursday, closes a gap in AMD's portfolio that cost Nvidia $20 billion to acquihire from Groq back in December. Cerebras CEO and cofounder Andrew Feldman is no fan of Nvidia, having previously denigrated the GPU giant as a mere AI arms dealer. And unlike GPUs, Cerebras' wafer scale engines (WSE) don't rely on HBM4 but instead use on-chip SRAM that's orders of magnitude faster. This has made Cerebras one of the fastest inference providers in the world, with output speeds often exceeding 2,000 tokens a second. By running compute-heavy prompt processing operations on AMD's Instinct GPUs and offloading the memory intensive token generation to Cerebras' WSE accelerator, the duo aims to achieve higher interactivity without compromising on throughput or cost to do it. “What you have with Instinct and the Helios rack is you have the leader in performance and memory capacity. And you marry that with our Wafer Scale Engine, which is the leader in SRAM and in memory bandwidth, and that combination allows us to deliver a solution that is unmatched,” Feldman said on stage. Neither company has shared specific figures, but the combination is expected to boost the number of tokens per second generated per watt of electricity consumed by as much as 5x. If any of this sounds familiar, Cerebras' accelerators fill the same role as the Groq 3 LPUs (Language Processing Units) announced alongside Nvidia's Vera Rubin rack systems at GTC in March. But where Nvidia needs two thousand Groq LPUs worth of SRAM to serve a trillion-parameter model like Kimi K2.5, AMD and Cerebras will need at most a few dozen. The combined offering will be available in Cerebras Cloud later this year, but may not be AMD's last deal with the upstart. “There are lots of ways to get workload-specific acceleration done, and I think Cerebras has a very interesting technology. It works very well with Helios,” Su said during a press conference following the keynote. “The idea of our open ecosystem is frankly that we will work with a number of different companies that may have technology that could be useful.” “You can expect that we're going to do more workload disaggregation going forward,” she added. ®

George Russell has admitted ahead of the Hungarian Grand Prix that recent setbacks in this year’s title race have made it the “toughest battle psychologically I’ve had”, with Mercedes discovering a software issue from the previous round.